A friend at work turned me on to the outstanding series of YouTube videos called Google Tech Talks. They're about an hour long each and I've only seen one completely, this one called How Ant Colonies Get Things Done. It was absolutely fantastic. Things like this are one of the reasons I don't watch TV at all any more.
After watching that one, I surfed through some of the others. There are 773 of them. A couple of them dealt with using meditation to deal with the stress of being constantly connected to the web. Here's one of them. At first I thought it was pretty cool, but as I watched it I grew sad. The room, the people and the topic seemed so tragically empty. Agnostic meditation is a shallow thing. It's spiritual beings acknowledging only their biochemical side yet hungering for a deeper tranquility. It was an effort to control their brain chemistry and nothing more. When the meditation was over and the workday resumed, they had no new tools to deal with the stress as it arose.
I thought of all the Catholic teachings on prayer and meditation and giving up your troubles to Christ that were most likely closed off to these people as Google's genuflection to political correctness prevented them from inviting speakers who could talk on such things. I'll admit I did not go through all 773 videos, so it's entirely possible that they did invite such a speaker, but I seriously doubt it.
For 2000 years, some of the greatest minds of the world have explored Catholic theology and applied it to the human condition. It's tragic that the world of prayer and spiritual meditation developed by these people is not offered to the employees of Google.
1 comment:
Talk about striking a nerve...
This is what I have to say to the meditation weenies:
I'm 59 years old, and I went through all "eastern" (TM, Buddhism, Taoist, yoga) thing when it was just becoming popular in the US. I even know people who have been to Esalen for the woo-hoo enlightenment higher plane "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" experience, and I remember the publication of "The Primal Scream".
As Gagdad Bob once pointed out, the trouble with all this stuff is the Light is not internal, it's external. It's not diurnal, it's Eternal.
You're not going to find the Light by rummaging around in your psychic attic (or mire, as some would have it) and chanting some foreign word - even if you paid the Dharma Dude 500 bucks for your own very special, magical-type word that is gay-ron-teed to work for you. That's doing horizontal thinking where vertical thinking is needed.
Oh yes, simple meditation has value. There is no doubt in my mind that it has physical effects. At one stressful point in my life I de-levitated my blood pressure with a mantra. But simple meditation is to enLightenment as a chisel is to The Pieta. It's a nice tool, but it lacks a Creator.
If what you want is Light, enLightenment, to be suffused with the Light, down to the quantum level, the Universal (aka Catholic) Church has a deal for you, the viewer. No 800 number to call or website to visit. There is a vast body of work, accessible and free to all, that will lead you to the Seventh Mansion, as described by St. Teresa of Avila. You will be suffused with Light to the degree that, even should be be burned at the stake or crucified upside down, you will leave this vale of tears with a beatific expression on your face.
But I warn you... The gate is narrow and the Way is hard. And you can't buy a ticket for thirty pieces of silver and a free weekend, even on the Monterey Peninsula.
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